Guest Blog: Ally Kennen

The Problems of Making Believe

An old adage regarding Creative Writing recommends you should

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW.

THINGS I DO KNOW HOW TO DO:

1)      Force feisty muscle- bound toddlers into car seats

(bribe with chocolate buttons)

2)      How to cause low-level unease in megalomaniac cats

(occasionally growl at them; gently, but with intent)

3)      That’s about all.

 

But all being well (fingers crossed, nods at magpie etc) I want to write (and publish) lots more books. I have written nine. Seven fattish ones and two thin ones. AND I HAVE NEVER:

1)      Kept a man–eating reptile in a drain by a reservoir (BEAST 2006)

2)      Written letters to a murderer on death row pretending to be my mum (BERSERK 2007)

3)      Fallen in love with a hunted, puppy-stealing, wild boy (BEDLAM 2009)

4)      Arranged a Viking Funeral for my Grandfather (SPARKS 2010)

5)      Chased a trapeze artist motorbike thief as they flee along the telephone wires

(THE HEDGEHOG MYSTERY 2011)

6)      Taken a game of dares so far it risks my life (QUARRY 2011)

7)      Ridden an escaped cow along the highway (DAYBREAK 2012)

8)      Been chased by the army over Dartmoor – in my socks (BULLET BOYS 2012)

9)      Been a child running a hotel inhabited by criminals (MIDNIGHT PIRATES 2013)

 

So I am writing stuff which is assuredly NOT TRUE. IT IS ALL LIES. The reader enters an unspoken contact that this is made-up, and yet the story needs to be believable or it is unsatisfying. My goal is to entice the reader to suspend disbelief, to self hypnotise and inhabit the otherworld of adventure and story, whilst trying not to rudely drag them from the page with a clumsy penswipe.

The question I am always asking myself, is: ‘where do I draw the line?’ How far can I go? When does a rollicking adventure story turn into an unwieldy heap of poo? I enjoy writing stories which are possible, but only just, I adore the implausible, so I am inhabiting a perilous zone. It makes one cross as one is reading away, immersed in the plot, only to have to throw the thing down in rage shouting I AM SORRY, BUT THAT WOULD NEVER, NEVER, HAPPEN. GRRRR. BURN THIS HEAP OF PAPER. THE TREE THAT WAS SACRIFICED TO MAKE THIS BOOK DIED IN VAIN!

In my new book, MIDNIGHT PIRATES, three children run an isolated Cornish beach hotel by themselves, having run away from school. The hotel is for sale and their parents have gone abroad.

A container, containing a working jet ski, is washed up on their beach, having come off a ship in heavy weather. All this unlikely, but possible. Amongst all this feathering, I do have the children getting hungry, arguing and running out of money. I like to weave some ‘reality’ into my fiction but not too much. I don’t want to read some poor imitation of life, I want to distort and contort it. I want to be Miranda, pulling wigs off  grumpy fake mermaids, and  16 year old Cal, night-riding my  jet ski with my glorious girlfriend bouncing along on a tyre behind me.

 

I don’t want to write, or read, too much about real life: waiting for buses, selecting potatoes and giving wry smiles at especially glorious cloud formations. Not unless the bus is being driven by a crazed toddler chasing a freak-cat, whose brain has been addled by a high-pressure storm cloud raining potatoes.

(And I BET a toddler has driven a bus before. I drove a tractor when I was two. So there.)

So we writers have to rely on our own ‘plausibility compass’.

Where do you draw the line, and why?

 

Photo by Candy Gourlay www.candygourlay.com

Ally Kennen writes for children and teenagers. Her  first book ‘Beast’ was shortlisted for the  CILIP Carnegie Medal, the Branford Boase Award and the Booktrust Teenage Prize. Her latest book Midnight Pirates was published by Marion Lloyd Books in January 2013.

 

Find out more about Ally on her website: www.allykennen.com

Follow Ally on twitter: @allykennen